Emirates defies COVID-19 with agile operations and travel corridors

John Benny | Staff Reporter

At the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, Emirates airline was processing close to 15,000 refund requests a day. That’s a huge number and it highlights the fact that the Dubai-based airline, even amid aviation’s worst crisis, was committed to serving its passengers. During a March interview with Adnan Al Kazim, Emirates’ Chief Commercial Officer, it was revealed that the airline had handled almost 2.7 million refund requests. “We managed almost Dh9.8 billion of money that was paid to passengers – when Dubai reopened in July 2020, the number of refund cases came down to 3,500 a day.”

In an update last month, Emirates said it had processed nearly 3.3 million refund requests since the start of the pandemic.

Early re-opening

Dubai re-opened to tourism on July 7 even when half the world was facing lockdowns. Within a few months, the emirate became the world’s most happening tourist destination.

“The traffic came in spikes – flights were quite full and even from the tourist side, we saw Dubai hitting half a million tourists in December,” Al Kazim said.

Around 1 million people came into Dubai just in December and January, said Kazim. Before the UAE was added to the UK's travel ban, Dubai-London was the busiest route in the world with a seating capacity of over 190,000 in the first week of 2021.

Travel corridor

When the Delta variant hit India, forcing several countries to close their borders in the first half of 2021, Emirates and Dubai responded quickly to the situation by setting up travel corridors. In June, Emirates announced that passengers could fly to Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Spain, and France without having to quarantine on arrival.

Emirates is now back to serving over 120 destinations or around 90 per cent of its pre-pandemic network.

A different approach

In a separate interview with Gulf News in May, Al Kazim said Emirates was focusing on conserving cash and boosting profitability rather than chase market share.

“I don't think market share should be the core focus of anyone - we need to make sure that we don't bleed cash,” said the commercial head on the sidelines of a travel event.

“We try to closely monitor our business and create that right balance between demand and the capacity that we deploy,” Al Kazim said.

Tough journey

“It was a tough journey and this journey goes through a lot of ups and downs that we are trying to manage daily,” Al Kazim said during the March interview.

With the Emirates brand name and support from the Dubai government, the airline will move forward from the crisis and regain its market position, Al Kazim said.